Tag Archive for ratings

Ratings are trickling in for Bellator MMA’s big back-to-back event weekend, which featured two Heavyweight Grand Prix semifinal bouts — Ryan Bader vs. Matt Mitrione (Bellator 207) and Fedor Emelianenko vs. Chael Sonnen — that aired live on Paramount Network. Unfortunately, it seems that staging shows on Friday and then Saturday night might not have been a good idea for television ratings.

MMA Fighting reports that Bellator 207 attracted about 416,000 viewers on Paramount. The good news is that’s up from any show in at least four months, dating back to “Macfarlane vs. Lara” back on June 29, 2018.

Meanwhile Spike TV sent us their own numbers for “Mitrione vs. Bader” which paint a slightly different picture. Focusing strictly on Ryan Bader vs. Matt Mitrione they say the show delivered 620,000 peaking at 798,000, although they say the entire telecast drew 493,000 viewers with DVR+3 in, up a bit from the number that MMA Fighting reported.

Here’s to hoping that many more tune in to watch the Heavyweight Grand Prix final between Fedor Emelianenko vs. Ryan Bader at Bellator 214, which takes place at The Forum in Inglewood (just outside Los Angeles), Calif., on Jan. 26, 2019. It’s the conclusion of a very entertaining and historic tournament, which will also crown a new division champion.

To check out the latest Bellator MMA-related news and notes be sure to hit up our comprehensive news archive right here.

So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that UFC 228 “Prelims” ratings were, “the lowest number in past year,” according to MMAFighting.com. Indeed, Dave Meltzer reports that the undercard on FX Network averaged 560,000 viewers, peaking with 683,000 viewers for Tatiana Suarez’ beatdown of Carla Esparza in the final bout prior to the start of the pay-per-view (PPV) broadcast.

It went a little something like this:

The reason for the poor viewership has, unsurprisingly, a lot to do with UFC parking the action-packed, four-fight card — which featured four exciting finishes, as well as a rare inverted kneebar courtesy of Aljamain Sterling (watch it) — on FX Network. Admittedly, as a mixed martial arts (MMA) writer who is obligated to cover the fights and is aware that they are airing live, it is always difficult to locate the FX Network-televised “Prelims” on my channel line up. It’s always changing, unlike the much more reliable FOX Sports 1 (FS1). But, according to Meltzer, the start of college football this past weekend and the various games on FS1 and other networks just contributed to an overall disinterest — or unawareness — of UFC 228’s undercard.

It seems as though just putting “Prelims” on FX Network is a recipe for lower ratings:

“Thus far in 2018, prelims held on FS 1 have averaged 789,000 viewers while those on FX have averaged 617,000 viewers. The most recent show on FX, the May 12 UFC 224 prelims, did 574,000 viewers. That was prior to the pay-per-view show headlined by Nunes vs. Raquel Pennington.”

The good news is that the Conor McGregor-led UFC 229 is on the horizon — and his star power alone should positively impact all undercard broadcast platforms. In addition, UFC will soon depart the FOX network and its offshoots, including FOX Sports 1, FOX Sports 2, and FX, to begin a new broadcasting deal with “The Worldwide Leader In Sports.” That includes a more aggressive schedule (see it) for 2019 and beyond.

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And yet, UFC on FOX 30’s overnight ratings are the worst in the series’ history, even lower than the Jacare-Brunson ratings three events ago. Television ratings have been trending down since the FOX deal began; the sport is no longer growing, and UFC should shoulder much of the blame. By filling the airwaves with cards like UFC: “Hamburg,” it loses viewers even when its show is amazing, as this past weekend was. It doesn’t care, because the promotion is making money hand over fist even as MMA shrinks back into the niche it came from.

None of this will hurt UFC right now. It just signed a $ 300 million per-year broadcast deal with ESPN, which insulates its revenue stream through 2024. It will be interesting to see how being on ESPN affects popularity. The problem thus far has been saturation. Just as with their pay-per-view (PPV) events, which have seen their base levels drop from nearly a half-million to little more than 100,000 buys since the days of Machida-Shogun, television ratings have suffered a gradual decline year over year. However, on ESPN, more fights will be live streamed than will be on television. This may have the effect of creating tiers, with many fans only tuning into the television events and the hardcores — who still number in the hundreds of thousands — tuning in for most or all of it.

Will you stream UFC events on ESPN’s app?

Insomnia

How Covington has fallen.

Kamaru Usman told @arielhelwani the UFC offered him a fight with Colby Covington in November.

Derek Brunson vs. Israel Adesanya is a perfect test for Adesanya’s prospects against the wrestlers at the top of 185.

Derek Brunson vs. Israel Adesanya is on the verge of being finalized for UFC 230 in NYC, per sources. Additionally, Adesanya and the UFC close to finalizing a new deal. He was already in need of a new one, after fighting three fights of a four fight deal in a span of five months.

Tim Kennedy delights in doing stuff other people would prefer never to do.

Trying to crawl through space a few hundred feet underground that is so tight you have to exhale to get your chest through. Only a few people have a crawled through this cave complex since it was discovered. pic.twitter.com/HM8nEVFWK5

Cub Swanson points out why MMA fighters train in supercamps instead of having a gym centered around them.

Cub Swanson brings up a good point about boxing type camps vs big gyms, that MMA fighters just didn’t make enough money to have those kinds of camps where everything is tailored around them. #themmahour

Jon Jones says he’s been spending the past year living right, which I’m assuming means no more cocaine. We know he’s still throwing back the alcohol, possibly up to 100 shots a night, thanks to Mike Perry.

“Mike Brown told me to stop jumping guillotines. I told him, ‘F you.’” I mean, don’t like to use the word ‘swag’ – because I sound like a colossal dork when I do – but Poirier has it. pic.twitter.com/cj8ct0i7ml

I think they are going to make him fight Tony Ferguson and if they do that’s going to be an insane, insane fight. Ferguson is a nonstop cardio machine who never runs out of ideas, and Poirier is the man who drowned Gaethje in volume and threw a fifty-strike combination to end Eddie Alvarez.

I don’t know how anyone decides fighters are getting ‘slower’- that kind of change would be measured in microseconds- but this GIF-heavy recap of Jose Aldo showing up and putting down a uniquely dangerous opponent in Jeremy Stephens was my kind of read.

Bellator 201: “Macfarlane vs. Lara” took place at Pechanga Casino and Resort in Temecula, Calif., on June 29, 2018, featuring a main event that saw Ilima-Lei Macfarlane defend her belt in a three-round battle with Alejandra Lara, with the latter enduring a really long armbar until she finally capitulated.

That women’s Flyweight title defense did television numbers the mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion was happy to report. Indeed, the main event delivered 710,000 viewers and peaked at 800,000 viewers. The show as a whole drew an average of 562,000 viewers (+3 DVR) on the 29th.

Bellator MMA also dropped this fun fact into its announcement:

“Fueling the growth (of the main event) was a 17 percent increase in the key demographic of men aged 18-49 compared to the most recent non-tentpole event.”

In fact, last Friday night’s telecast of “Estrellas I” on Univision beat Bellator 197 on Paramount, to the tune of 583,000 total viewers, including 296,000 in the 18-49 year old category. Not too shabby, considering it aired in a later time slot versus prime time for Bellator.

And that doesn’t include the 261,000 streamers on Facebook Live, or the 4 million viewers watching in Mexico.

“We are clearly the No. 2 U.S. promotion and coming after No. 1,” McLaren told MMAmania.com. “We already beat UFC in Spain and Mexico. Estrellas did one-third of UFC at its top rating at 8-9:00 pm and we nearly matched their last hour. Typically, Spanish is 15 percent of the general market and we were 30 percent of UFC. And they were in prime time.”

No question the sagacious Scot will be looking to replicate his most recent showing with “Estrellas II,” locked and loaded for this Friday night (April 20) inside Gimnasio Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico (details), featuring the debut of former UFC bantamweight contender Erik “El Goyito” Perez.

It was a closely contested main event that led to a controversial decision, which inspired Gegard Mousasi to tell people to get in line to do something other than complain. Whether or not Spike TV will complain about the ratings is something that fight fans and others can debate at will.

The Spike TV-televised show on Friday night drew an average of 523,000 viewers, but the main event between Mousasi and Shlemenko increased that by a quarter-million, peaking at 792,000 viewers (DVR +3) overall.